Aleksandar Pavlovic has found his place at FC Bayern. The 22-year-old is a regular in central midfield under Vincent Kompany and has also held his own against new competition from Tom Bischof. With the German national team, however, the Munich native faces another battle for his spot.
Jürgen Klopp’s first squad selection offers an interesting clue in this regard. While Joshua Kimmich and Felix Nmecha are scheduled to play in the first two Nations League matches against the Netherlands and Greece, Pavlovic won’t join the squad until the second block of games.
No clear pecking order can be inferred from this. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to believe that Klopp might start his first matches with Kimmich and Nmecha in the center. For Pavlovic, that would initially be a minor setback, despite his strong performances in Munich.
After all, the Bayern player, in particular, would seem to have a strong case on his side: Kimmich and Pavlovic play together week in and week out.
Klopp changes the starting point for Pavlovic
Klopp has already made it clear where he sees Kimmich in the future. The new national team coach plans to use the DFB captain as a midfielder rather than a right back.
This likely means one of the two spots in the center is already taken. Several players are vying for the second spot—most notably Pavlovic and Nmecha.
Here of all places, the Dortmund player seems to have a slight edge for now. BILD recently reported that Klopp plans to rely on Nmecha as a key pillar in the long term. His lineup for the first international break at least aligns with this assessment.
For Pavlovic, this means that the well-established Bayern partnership with Kimmich will apparently not automatically carry over to the national team for the time being.
Yet the 22-year-old is in strong form at the club level. Tom Bischof had applied pressure during preseason and seemed to reignite the competition in Bayern’s midfield. Pavlovic, however, did not let himself be pushed out. Aside from the cup match against VfL Osnabrück, he has been in the starting lineup for every competitive match so far.
At the DFB, Pavlovic is still waiting for his breakthrough.
The fact that Pavlovic doesn’t hold the same standing on the national team, however, also has to do with his history with the DFB so far.
His 2024 European Championship on home soil fell through at the last minute due to tonsillitis. Later, a broken collarbone and mononucleosis, among other things, sidelined him. Time and again, Pavlovic was absent precisely when he could have established himself on the national team.
Even the World Cup didn’t bring the breakthrough he’d hoped for. Although Pavlovic was part of the German squad, he wasn’t able to make his mark on the tournament.
Under Klopp, he now has a new chance—though initially as part of the second tier of the expanded squad. There, he’ll face off against his direct Bayern rival, Bischof, among others. The two could even play together in central midfield in the matches against Serbia and Greece.
For Pavlovic, therefore, the coming weeks are about more than just ordinary international matches. At FC Bayern, he has long since proven that he can hold his own against strong competition. Now he must convince Klopp that he can be more than just an alternative behind Kimmich and Nmecha for the DFB as well.